My Knees In The Back Of A Cab In April

BY LAURA JANE

Today is the four year anniversary of the day I went into anorexia recovery. I am not going to write about what that day was like because I have already written about what that day was like. And if I was for some reason forced to write about what that day was like I don't think I could make it feel too powerful or emotional or anything. I don't feel a tremendous amount of empathy for the person I was on April 15th four years ago, nor do I feel a tremendous amount of disdain for her. And I'm not indifferent; I love that girl. I love her, I think, the way a mother loves the one of her children she loves the least. 

Writing about my feelings on our old blog nogoodforme.com was an integral component of my recovery process. I'm happy I wrote those words but I don't think they are necessary for any single person to ever read again, unless said "single person" is a dude with a crush on me who is hard-up for things I wrote to read. Those words are dramatic at best. When I wrote them I wanted life to be dramatic and my eating disorder gave me an excuse to behave dramatically, which compounded my irrational belief that my life was meant to be dramatic. 

I don't believe I was ever mentally ill. I think I was vain. 

I'm not proud of myself for recovering from anorexia. I think that the bare minimum of what can be expected of a human being is that they not go out of their way to starve themselves to death. I'm happy I did what I needed to do to get myself out of a place where I felt it necessary to starve myself to death and I am very grateful to everyone who supported me through the gigantic spectacle I felt it necessary to make out of that process. It was much, much harder than it needed to be. 

I am not 100% sure why we as a culture have decided to fetishize the emaciated and skeletal female form but I am definitely 100% sure that it's fucking insane. I think it's even more insane that hundreds of thousands of intelligent self-identified feminists restrict their caloric intake and then tweet or blog self-loathing shit about doing it, for (it seems) no reason other than that they want men they'd rather die than fuck to want to fuck them. I wouldn't bank on anything either way but it seems like when you die you probably die. You're probably gone forever. Maybe you'll be reincarnated in some vague sort of way you can't fathom right now but you're definitely not going to be Laura, or whoever you are, forever. 

I just want to have a good time while I'm alive. Eating beautiful food is one of the best things I ever do. I know you never get the chance to do it all over again and that's the whole thing about why life's life but if I could do it all over again I would have spent the three years I spent starving myself to death eating cooler shit while simultaneously learning to love my good old body for being it's tallish awkward soft chill self. I'm Laura and it's okay. Who the fuck cares what magazines say, they're just a bunch of shitty paper bound together to make rich people get richer. My eating disorder was nothing and it was worth nothing. When I was skinny I wanted to kill myself. Today I don't know how much I weigh and I never ever in a thousand years thought I could be this happy. But I am and it's magnificent.